Promenades blanches

Alain Michard & Camille Planeix (& Mathias Poisson)

"I had the pleasure of joining this guided walk through the city of Mons during Via Festival. Asked to hold hands and remain silent, the promenaders became a spectacle for those on the streets, watching us as a performance in the same was as we observed everyone around. Stopping to observe the view from a picture frame - held in place by two of the festival volunteers - with a catalogue of everything she saw recited from memory by Camille Planeix, finding ourselves wandering through a car park, in the stage door of the festival theatre, and up onto the hill overlooking the town. After the first twenty minutes, my perception of place changed dramatically, the streets unfolding their mystery as a poetic juxtaposition between the concrete and familiar; and more esoteric unexpected qualities emerged. The recording of the walk ends in our communication attempted using tin cans and string at the hilltop park of the cathedral, while the following discussion with Alain about the philosophy and development of the work took place on the walk back down and is undocumented, as maybe some of the best conversations must remain. The following text is the description of the project, forwarded to my by Camille." Jodi Rose

Promenades blanches in Chamarande, 2008, © Mathias Poisson

s e n s i t i v e s a n d g u i d e d v i s i t s

Within one hour and a half, the walks begin with a prelude, a protocol statement which sets straightaway the rules of the game. The walks are made in silence, two by two, every pair consisting in one guide aware and one trusting the guide. The "guided" person wears a pair of glasses on, so opaque that the world appears to him/her as floating and consisting in spots of bright colours without outlines. The whole walk is completely composed of listening and creates a long silent march in the city. This is both landscape choreography and musical composition, where the ear is the first to be sollicitated. The pleasure lies between the rythm proper to the city, its different atmospheres and densities, it also lies in the absence of the guide, the fusion of the intimate sensations in a powerful relationship within the group.

The theme of this walk is " the crossing ": the walk slows down, but never stops, never returns back, continues the paths from a place to another, from an atmosphere to another, accumulates those atmospheres, gets immersed in a variety of the collected sensations, retains the fragrances passing through. The car park, the hospital, the construction site, the chapel, the hotel, the cinema, the garden, the shopping mall, the bakery, succeed one after another, like so many environments where the pedestrians are the momentary passengers. The notion of a choreographic composition is built on this relation between the body and the landscape. The group of pedestrians forms a body, a unity that moves. The group sees the shapes and figures from the inside meanwhile the spectator watches from outside. The group is fully aware of being exposed but doesn’t feel captive in his being both spectator and actor.

Promenades blanches, Chamarande, 2008 © Johann Maheut

A process of recreation

Every new place is subject to a meticulous exploration during the preparation phase. Several days are needed to determine the locations and the composition of a new version of the Promenades Blanches, specific to the places where it sets. Little by little the walks evolve towards a more refined choreographic shape, composed by the rhythms and moves/figures that are born from the geography of places (frontline, walking backwards, running, dispersal, mass).

The origin

The Promenades Blanches was elaborated in 2006 for the Novart Festival with TNT in Bordeaux. Alain Michard and Mathias Poisson shared their perceptions of the city with those of people with visual impairments during a series of workshops. They exchanged and experimented about their relationships with space and wandering. The questions of guiding, mobility and sensations were discussed and became potential issues for artistic investment.

Dates

Domaine départemental de Chamarande / Art centre / juin 2008

Versailles, Festival Plastique Danse Flore - festival of performances in the Domain of Versailles Castle / Potager du Roi / septembre 2008

Paris, Théâtre de la Cité Internationale / juin 2009

Rennes, Cultural Centre Colombier / Festival les Tombées de la nuit / juillet 2009

In parallel with the walks…

WORKSHOPS: Possibility to propose workshops around the walk in public places, guided tours and the perception of the space.

MAP: Possibility to realize and publish a walk map.

EXPOSITION: Possibility to present Mathias Poisson’s exhibition Graphie du déplacement, maps and drawings about urban walks.

Promenades blanches in Versailles, 2008, © Stéphane Buellet

Alain Michard and Mathias Poisson

Two v i s u a l a n d d a n c e a r t i s t s

Since 2002, Alain Michard and Mathias Poisson have been leading a reflection and experimentations about the representations of the landscape. They propose events (walks, invitations of artists or tourist guides, expositions, publishing of walk maps).

Their work is mainly based on meeting with the habitants, visiting marginal places and inventing particular experimentations to share with walkers. Often, they grope, follow strangers, are guided by partially-sighted people, lead investigations, push doors, try street furniture and masses movement of material. The practice of a territory (a city, a garden) is always the point of departure of their artistic researches; nevertheless the productions exceed widely the place where they take shape.

These researches led them to several types of observations:

What are the modes of representation of the city?

What kind of tracks leaves a walker?

What shape takes the urban space in the mental space?

What imagination develops in the contact of a city?

Who guides a body in a walk?

How appear the landscapes, the clichés and the details of places?

Map of Promenades blanches (Braille signs for blind people)

Bordeaux, 2006

Crossed biography

Alain Michard and Matthias Poisson collaborated regularly :

- Le Centre de documentation and La Coalition in the Laboratories of Aubervilliers in 2004; the CCNRB and Triangle, in Rennes in 2005, collective performance in progress led by Alain Michard with choreographers and visual artists.

- CouaC, TNT - BORDEAUX and for the festival 100DD in La Villette. A proposition with four performers (dance artist, sound designer, painter and musician).

- For the exhibition Napoli Presente in November 2005, invited by the collective Stalker (a collective of artists based in Italy which research are based on the exploration of urban territory), they realized an installation including an edition of postcards of walks "for a tourism in reverse" at the Museum of contemporary art of Naples.

In 2006, they created the Carte Blanche of the walks in Bordeaux.

In 2009, Mathias Poisson was invited to present and to develop his exhibition Graphie du déplacement and to create a map of walk, during Alain Michard’s residency in Cultural Centre Le Colombier

Promenades blanches in Versailles, 2008

© Stéphane Buellet

B i o g r a p h ie s

Alain Michard is choreographer and visual artist. In recent years, he has developed projects in several fields: plays, hybrid forms (performance-conference-installation), and various site-specific projects.

His work deals with the notions of theatricality (narrative, character, voice), sculpture, (re)presentation, and dramatic sound. And his recurrent subjects are those of accident, drift and accumulation. The hybrid forms follow two main lines : the body/object sculptures and the voice and the representation of speech. Whether for theatre or for public areas, his projects are born out of contexts where they grow and nourish themselves. Some of them emerge from a global project of "city practice”, often produced in collaboration with the habitants. These projects are about notions of territory, the imaginary of daily life, the active, inclusive and intrusive look, or about investing public spaces through private spaces. In the same idea, with a certain taste for diversity and without any choreographic bias, he writes a bit, proposes lecture-performances and conference-performances. He produces and makes films (Ascension, Encore Chaud, On air, etc.) and regularly conceives experimental film programs. He regularly invites artists to his work sessions (Tollé, Dazibao) or produces some of their projects thanks to carte blanche. (A domicile, Feuilleton Lelabo...).

Where he is welcomed, he gives priority to long-term partnerships, through residences (Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers, TNT-Bordeaux, La Villette in Paris, the C.C. Colombier in Rennes). He trained and performed for Odile Duboc. He is still an occasional performer for Boris Charmatz.

Last pieces :

. Promenades blanches (next : Antwerpen MAS museum, may 2011)

. J’ai tout donné opus 1 - Biennale de Rennes + C.C.Colombier / Open school &

Center of resources (lab, performances, workshops and exhibition) – may-july 2010

. J’ai tout donné opus 2 – new piece created in Musée de la danse Rennes feb2011

Mathias Poisson is an artist plastician and a performer.

His theoretical and artistic researches are about the practices of urban walks. Author of an experimental tourist guide, designer of sensitive maps, guide for public and adventurous visits, he questions the modes of the representation of a walk not only by writing or using images but also by performing. He invites people to lazy and attentive walks. He proposes diverse ways of sensitive wanderings in surprising places where the experience of the visitor is the centre of the research. He is also interpret and a space and set designer for perfoming arts such as productions with Anne Collod, Catherine Contour, Pierre Droulers, Xavier Marchand, Manolie Soysouvanh, Emmanuelle Huynh, Alain Michard and the Eclair Magazine. He takes part in Paysages Sensibles. Alger, Beyrouth, Marseille, Naples… an exhibition at Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée, 2010, Marseille, France.